Oh Orphan Black no
Tell me your key season-ending plot point isn't based on a complete and total misunderstanding of patent law. If these folks were from the UK (as Mrs. S's claimed background suggests, at least some of the work seems to have been done there unless she was lying about absolutely everything), the patent term would be 20 years there, that is, long expired. In the US, there is a theoretical chance that some weird submarine patent application is hanging around, filed and unpublished pre-1995 and thus unexpired, but human organisms are not patent-eligible (and it's not as if they would be in the UK either). Same with Canada (though there the key date is 1989); also a world domination plan would require international protection.
Note that I am not saying that Sarah should know this (though Cosima could reasonably be expected to have a clue, given her field), but rather that the schemers supposedly behind this plan should have known this: any plan that didn't involve monetizing the technology until the clones were 30 was ... well, let's just say that the Underpants Gnomes have a better business model. Of course "intellectual property" could mean "trade secret," but that's not going to work either (and never could have been expected to do so) for reasons not worth going into at this juncture.
All will be forgiven if it turns out that the baddies don't have such a plan, currently, though there was some prior 25-year-old monetization plan that didn't work out, and now Sarah and Cosima are operating on bad 30-year-old information. Because that would be hilarious.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.
Note that I am not saying that Sarah should know this (though Cosima could reasonably be expected to have a clue, given her field), but rather that the schemers supposedly behind this plan should have known this: any plan that didn't involve monetizing the technology until the clones were 30 was ... well, let's just say that the Underpants Gnomes have a better business model. Of course "intellectual property" could mean "trade secret," but that's not going to work either (and never could have been expected to do so) for reasons not worth going into at this juncture.
All will be forgiven if it turns out that the baddies don't have such a plan, currently, though there was some prior 25-year-old monetization plan that didn't work out, and now Sarah and Cosima are operating on bad 30-year-old information. Because that would be hilarious.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.